I realized after I posted it that i probably should have used periods after the initials to delineate it from a car. The way it looks now seems as though the emphasis is on the vehicle they were driving...

He saw a man sitting on the minibus - he thought he looked Muslim so he decided to follow the bus. More and more people joined him until he was at the head of a mob. "We followed him," he said. "If he reached the intersection, the Burundians would protect him. So we told the minibus driver to stop. The driver said: 'You're right. He is a Muslim.'"

He described what happened after the man was dragged off the bus: "I kicked his legs out from under him. He fell down. I stabbed his eyes. "Muslim! Muslim! Muslim! I stabbed him in the head. I poured petrol on him. I burned him. Then I ate his leg, the whole thing right down to the white bone. That's why people call me Mad Dog."

On the video, "Mad Dog" is seen happily chewing, his cheeks bulging. He waves a leg about in between mouthfuls.

As we interviewed him, a small crowd gathered, all Christian. They shook his hand and patted his head, smiling and laughing as he, for the first time, smiled broadly. To them, he was a hero.

In social psychology, the fundamental attribution error (also known as correspondence bias or attribution effect) is people's tendency to place an undue emphasis on internal characteristics to explain someone else's behavior in a given situation, rather than thinking about external situations. It does not explain interpretations of one's own behavior—where situational factors are more easily recognized and can thus be taken into consideration. The flip side of this error is the actor–observer bias, in which people tend to overemphasize the role of a situation in their behaviors and underemphasize the role of their own personalities.

Very few muslims I have met have expressed opinions of atheists. They seem reluctant to acknowledge that we exist, and they hate arguing with us because they're uncomfortable arguing with anyone except a christian.

If you count the number of countries where particular religions are illegal, islam is the most legal and accepted religion in the world. And it has the most pockets of exclusivity since islam is more likely than any other religion to ban all its competitors. And yet you've somehow managed to convince the world you are the most oppressed little minority ever, whilst simultaneously engaging in islamist purges whenever you want. Yeah, you sure are a big ol' victim...

Sorry, I forgot. You don't ban them, you just kill all the people who practice them and institute theocracy. Or just terrorize them until they leave. Whichever's faster. And if anyone points out the horrible things islam has done, and they're too far away for you to kill them, you call them "racist."

The Media first painted the foreign funded Muslim coup as some kind of inner struggle brought on by something the Christians did. Now that the Christians managed to push back the Muslims and are taking revenge for their dead loved ones, the media harps about how they are violent Cannibals.

I think the Christians are more justified in their counterstrikes than the Muslims have been in theirs. But the Media would never present it that way, because it justifies what everybody already understands innately.

Fuck the Media, its all propaganda these days, and fuck Islam. All the media towards it is just to support an agenda by some political power somewhere.

Segregation should make a comeback. Its obvious that two different groups in such circumstances can't ever get along. They should be removed from each other until they have sufficient wealth such that they can function without trying to kill each other. High minded moralism just gets millions killed by denying human nature until the system falls apart.

It's a general consensus that I've noticed on this subreddit. Everytime a muslim does something, it's automatically the fault of the religion, but if any other type of person does the same thing, people take into account the geopolitics, culture, poverty, education, and various other circumstances to justify the act. And they aren't wrong for doing that, I'd just wish they would extend some of that understanding to Muslims as well.

I guess it tells us that islam just as christianity is not a barrier for fucked up people to behave like animals, so being a christian nor being a muslim does not ensure you will be good, more so if both these ideologies preach hate in one way or another. Then again, people are stupid enogh to convince themselves that a Beatles song gives you permision to kill. Humanity is hopeless.

I get your point but it's different because with Islam, "they're not real Muslims" is usually said about Wahhabi's who in every other sense are mainstream Sunni's - ie. they've said the shahada (statement of faith), pray five times a day and meet all the requirements of being a Muslim but are being defined out of the faith by liberals and moderate Muslims for their extreme political views.

This is completely different to many of these African 'Christian' groups who are literally syncretistic combinations of various types of Christianity and local tribal religion. They practice muti, cannibalism, have witchdoctors, apply 'spells' before battle and so on. They'd fail a basic Christian statement of faith like the Nicene creed because they often believe in multiple deities.

No true scotsman has nothing to do with describing disparate religions bent on killing eachother.

It says "you can't judge me because I'm not ideologically pure". I couldn't fucking care less about ideology. I'm just saying that ONE of these two groups has the support of very influential people within its religious hierarchy, and the other doesn't.

I remember reading some highly upvoted comments on /r/worldnews posts before of people saying you don't see Christians massacring Muslims, only the other way around. Wonder where these people claiming that are now?

Hey, I've been upvoted for criticizing Islam. I'm more than happy to respond.

A little bit of logic for you:

There's no a-priori reason why members of two different religions should have an equal propensity for violence. People are free to argue that on average religious group A is more dangerous than group B.

The fact that in one nation people from group B are involved in killing doesn't invalidate the hypothesis, because it is a hypothesis about group-averages.

Personally, I think Islamic extremism is currently a greater threat to the West than Christian extremism and this crisis hasn't particularly changed my mind, except that it highlights that Christian extremism is also a problem in other parts of the world.

You can disagree with my view, but the point I'm making here is not about Muslims vs. Christians, it's about the difference between averages and individuals. Claiming that this one incident is enough to disprove the hypothesis that Islam is no more dangerous than Christianity is like claiming that one really cold winter in North America is enough to invalidate global warming.

However- I will admit that it's possible for me and others who criticize Islam to fall foul of confirmation bias. If you argue against Islam then, yes, you're more likely to notice examples which confirm your ideas. But confirmation bias is something that affects us all and it's hard to know how to eradicate it.

BTW- I'm an atheist. I don't really give a damn which religion you are. The reason I think Islam is a greater threat is because it seems to me that it is a greater threat- it's not because I'm trying to defend Christianity.

Edit: OK, I'm going to stop here- because once again I'm finding that people are more interested in downvoting comments they disagree with than in actual debate. (I wonder just how small-minded you have to be to do that- to go from page to page downvoting anything you personally disagree with?)

Islamic extremists are best described as heretical. Their goal is a political solution (establishment of a global caliphate operating under strict sharia law and puritan ideals, a recreation of the 7th century) based on a set of ideals propogated in the 20th century based mainly on the works of Georg Hegel and Marxist-Leninism. An example the jihadists believe they are the vanguard of the islamic world. They believe muslims exist in a state of jahiliyyah (pre-islamic ignorance) and that existence has always seen a struggle between jahiliyyah and islam, this idea is ripped directly from Hegel's clash of civilizations idea. It's also been said that sufism is the opium of islam, remind you of another similar statement.

So islamism is basically a hoax, its's about as islamic as a gay bar.

"Beware of extremism in religion, since those before you were only destroyed by extremism."

The major proponent of the idea of reestablishing the islamic state based on puritanical sharia law was abulala mawdudi. He was massively influenced by georg hegel (clash of civilizations) and the vanguardism concept defined in Marxist-Leninism. He pretty much lifted their work and reorientated into islamic terms by crossing out words and replacing them with islamic terms, for example "sufism is the opium of islam". The very basis of islamism was nicked from atheist communists. The more you know eh.

Thanks for the reply, but I should point out that you've edited your comment since I replied.

I'm not particular familiar with Abulala Mawdudi or his particular ideology, so I won't contest the question of Marxist-Leninist influence on his own particular ideology, however, the concept of vanguardism is simply a particular model of political economy. Its a widely adopted model adopted by many political movements, from Trotskyists, Ba'athists, to Latin American Liberation theology movements. As a concept I feel its best understood as a model of organizational akin to say a cell based party structure.

Also, Clash of Civilizations theory is P.S.Huntington and postdates Abulala Mawdudi by several decades. I think you may be thinking of Hegels historical dialectic and as someone who' familiar with the concept in the context, both in Marx and Fukiyama, you've left me extremely fascinated.

Would you happen to be able to recommend any texts by Mawdudi on the historical dialectic, or that at least deals with the subject?

As an international relations student its by far the most wanky area to write an essay on.

Sorry this is a long one, just wanted to follow up with a few sources.

Islamist thought comes from the islamic revival which coincided with the end of colonialism and the dawn of new independent states - exciting times of freedom and renewal.

The context with Mawdudi was here was a super intelligent, incredibly articulate well read guy who hated the west and living under the yoke of imperialism and saw it in a state of ignorance that islam would have to go to war with and it was he who created the pure islamic state idea that has dominated islamic political thought ever since.

Mawdudi was born in India in 1903 so he would have seen the reds take over Russia and the power revolution had, he lived through Indian independence and the creation of Pakistan and indeed later Bangladesh. He was a philosopher a thinker and his job was as editor of a muslim newspaper, his columns were translated into arabic and made their way across the arab world where they were picked up by Hasan Al-Banna and Sayyed Qutb. Mawdudi spent much of his youth reading a lot of recent (at the time) and older philosophy, so a lot of his ideas eminated from that.

About Mawdudi and Hegel, sorry, its just a page in a google book,hegel suggested that history was a clash of old and new idea, a clash between the thesis (the current) and the antithesis (the incoming), and Mawdudi nicked it.

So it wasn't actually Huntington that developed the theory of the clash of civilizations it was Hegel, and both Mawdudi and Huntington plagiarized his ideas. Which happens I guess, but it's why I will confidently debate anyone who believes that the likes of al-qaeda are drawing their inspiration specific cherry picked lines from the koran. They couldn't be more wrong. Islamism's political ideology really does come from these atheist philosophers. That kind of modern Islamism started with Mawdudi.

As for Vanguardism, yes you are correct it has been used widely. Mawdudi however may have been one of the first to steal it, given the era, this was expanded upon by Qutb, Qutb frequently mentions the islamic vanguard as those who strive to establish the islamic state and proposed the use of takfir (calling other muslims apostates) against the jahili muslims who live under jahili man made law because if they are happy to accept man made law and not the law of god (sharia) then they live in ignorance and are not muslims at all, therefore they are apostates and the only good muslims are the islamic vanguard who are trying to create the khilafa. They use ibn Tamiyyahs Mardin Fatwa against the Mongols to further justify this excuse for murdering innocents.

These are all radical ideas in islam and go against the traditional checks and balances of sharia and the quran where apostates would be dealt with in a court by judges and given some time to repent and rejoin islam before being beheaded. That's what the koran says. Classical islam is quite different from this angry, retributive islam. It expressed kindness and fairness and compassion, but somehow these political ideas have taken root.

extremist Islam as we know it today is actually an extremely recent socio-political phenomenon which was given credence, funding and support from the U.S and U.S backed regimes such as Saudi Arabia whilst at the same time not just the U.S but the west notably England and France (1956 Suez crisis) continually sought to undermine the more secular and past reigning political ideology of secular pan-Arabic nationalism vis-a-vis the ideals espoused and promoted by such men as Nasser and many before him ever since the fall of the Ottomans.

Im just a dirty kufr with a keen interest in islamic history and islamism they couldnt give a flying fuck what I think. Their ideologies are based on the works of atheist communists and a misreading of a 13th century fatwa.

You can prove any thing you want with religion

How is this different from anything else? Any ideology can be bad when taken to its extremes.

Compare and contrast life in the secular West to the Islamic world. In the secular West we have traditions of scientific enquiry, democracy and debate. We can question all ideas, rejecting any that we find lacking, whereas in the Islamic world it is a given that Allah is the ultimate authority and that it's not permissible to criticize the Qur'an.

Well of course, but as I said, there's no a priori reason why all religions should be equally harmless. Some ideologies work better than others and it seems to me that currently, Islam is producing more extremists, more fundamentalism and more trouble.

I suppose you can take the view that there's no such thing as a harmful ideology- it's all a matter of how fanatically you follow your chosen 'ism'. Well, OK, but I don't find that hypothesis particularly convincing when there are ideologies like Islam which require people to 'submit' their every waking moment to serving religious ideals.

You're a Muslim. What's your opinion? Do you completely discount the idea that Islam is susceptible to fanaticism? If not, then how do we temper religious extremism?

Do you completely discount the idea that Islam is susceptible to fanaticism?

There exists not even a single doctrine in the annals of humanity that is not susceptible to fanaticism, it just so happens that Islam is far more prone to irascible fanatics in the 21st century due to a myriad of socioeconomic and geopolitical reasons. Islamic fanaticism did not exist under Abbasids or the Seljuks or the Rashiduns or the Fatimids or the Ayuubids or even the Ottomans, or have you forgotten that?

If not, then how do we temper religious extremism?

Religious extremism is eradicated through education with an emphasis on rationality. It's difficult to cannibalize some random guy on the bus for belonging to a different theological creed if you are able to conduct critical thinking.

There exists not even a single doctrine in the annals of humanity that is not susceptible to fanaticism

So why go to the trouble of having an 'ism' at all? I'm quite happy to live without isms in my life and it doesn't seem to be a problem for me.

Religious extremism is eradicated through education with an emphasis on rationality.

Well, I agree with that. The problem is though that Islam, like other religions is not rational. If you subject religion to the same standards as other ideas about the world you very quickly find out that it's factually incorrect in all its predictions and can't actually be true. Of course, you're welcome to prove me wrong by e.g. trying to publish a physics paper using knowledge you get from the Qur'an, but I doubt you'll get very far. The creationists have been playing that game for a century or more and they have yet to make any inroads into the world of scientific knowledge.

Actually- I've no problem with irrationality per se, and I, like most people enjoy my fair share of harmless nonsense like Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad. The problem is though that many religious people take their irrational fancies and daydreams to be the literal truth.

I'm quite happy to live without isms in my life and it doesn't seem to be a problem for me.

You may not be cognizant of an isms in your life, but they are definitely present, for you would be nothing but a glorified husk of flesh without them. You have a multitude of inexplicit doctrines within the vestiges of your mind, such as not infringing upon the liberty of another person, and so forth. Simple things like that.

I choose to live my life in harmony with a creed that I have personally determined to be the truth, but the problem with a fanatic is that he disregards the creed in exchange for pure irrationality and jingoism. Regardless of what the creed or ideology exhorts towards, a fanatic can always find a way to fuck it up. Just look at Stalin and communism or the Reconquista and Christianity or Burma and Buddhist extremists in the 21st century or Taoists and Maoism in the 20th century.

I don't mind people disagreeing with me, but when I see that a comment which I've put work into thinking about and writing has collected 8 down votes for expressing an unpopular opinion I start to lose heart.

Do we want Reddit to be a popularity contest in which only the safest most popular opinions are valued or do we want to see genuine debate on topics like this? I know which side of the issue I'm on, and it's not the one involving downvoting everyone who disagrees with me.

we know a shit if those cannibals are Christians. stop believe british satanists medias everything they lie to you. all we know so far is that Christians organized and fight back against muslim invaders into their country. the cannibalism can be anything. muslims themselves or starving population. or even some fucking shit british press invented to blame this conflict on Christians.

well given its on video and being reported by the BBC who would reasonably be expected to side with Christians but are marginally unbiased then I'd argue it's probably true and has happened during previous sectarian conflicts

It was probably me and I stand by it. They didn't burn these people in the name of Christ the way a Muslim suicide bomber detonates his vest in the name of Allah. These are nominally religious people that, similar to the historical violence Ireland, use the word "Christian" as a way to distinguish their gang from the other gang.

If you think suicide bombers blow themselves up in the name of God with no other motivation but to please him, you really haven't done your research. All terrorist organisations have sort of mandate they try to achieve via their tactics. Even Al qaida didn't just form to kill Americans, they did their attacks as blackmail to achieve a set of demands namely the expulsion of us forces from the middle East and surrounding regions.

But yeah let's not think about the reality of the situation but rather resort to comforting fallacies. No true Scotsman eh!

Your analogy is one of the stupidest, most ignobly self-centered expressions exemplifying the sheer stupefying ignorance with which morons from wealthy and safe countries like the U.S comment on the reasons causes and actions of people living in desperate conditions at harsh times.

Actually, that's not necessarily true. The 9/11 bombers, for instance, drank freely. They were hardly models of Islamic virtue. It's true they did turn to religion to help legitimize what they were doing, but I'm not sure you could say they were doing it purely for personal piety.

Political resistance often becomes mixed up very much with religion. To say that they did it because of their religion simplifies the issue, even if that did play into it.

When you're the 6th brother in a large family and your eldest took all the eligible girls in the village, then the second brother took the remaining few and your 3rd and 4th get to keep anything in case the first or second die, meanwhile everyone's saying to you "if you die for God you will get 72 virgins in heaven" - you put on the exploding trousers rather quickly.

You could say that this is down to religion, hormones, or culture - take your pick, but it's fairly well documented that this is the thinking.

"fairly well documented". care to back this up? There is pretty much consensus in most islamic scholarship that the 72 virgins in heaven thing isn't even mentioned in the quran--the correct interpretation of the word is grapes--i.e. you get wine in heaven (along with rivers of milk and honey). so yeah nobody is going to kill themself in the hopes of getting laid.

god your ass must get jealous of all the shit that comes out of your mouth.

"Most men in most societies marry, or try to. This is more difficult than usual in polygamous societies in which powerful men may have as many as four wives, leaving three potential husbands without a date for Saturday night - or any night. It is in the crucible of all-male intensity that the bonds of terrorist commitment and self-denial are formed. They share the sweet-sour prospect of striking a fiery suicidal blow for the self-evident purity of a religion of love" - Lionel Tiger, Darwin professor of anthropology at Rutgers University, NJ - Men in Groups and The Decline of Males.

"Cultures that permit men to take multiple wives, the intra-sexual competition that occurs causes greater levels of crime, violence, poverty and gender inequality than in societies that institutionalize and practice monogamous marriage." University of British Columbia-led study - considered the most comprehensive study of polygamy and the institution of marriage, the study finds significantly higher levels rape, kidnapping, murder, assault, robbery and fraud in polygynous cultures. According to Henrich and his research team, which included Profs. Robert Boyd (UCLA) and Peter Richerson (UC Davis), these crimes are caused primarily by pools of unmarried men, which result when other men take multiple wives.

"COUNTLESS studies have shown that, the more polygamous a society, the more aggressive its males. Polygamous hunter-gather societies are absurdly violent." The Diversity Illusion - Ed West

This false myth of "white raisins" originated from Christoph Luxenberg, a modern author writing under a pseudonym.

Nobody with any minor scholarship of islam actually believes the 72 virgins thing. it is not written in the quran, and the source of it is from a book of hadiths (sayings) written 300 years after the quran was written:

ÈIt was mentioned by Daraj Ibn Abi Hatim, that Abu al-Haytham 'Adullah Ibn Wahb narrated from Abu Sa'id al-Khudhri, who heard Muhammad saying, 'The smallest reward for the people of Heaven is an abode where there are eighty thousand servants and seventy-two houri, over which stands a dome decorated with pearls, aquamarine and ruby, as wide as the distance from al-Jabiyyah to San'a.

However, regarding the above statement Hafiz Salahuddin Yusuf has said: "The narration, which claims that everyone would have seventy-two wives has a weak chain of narrators." There is also a theory that the promise of 72 virgins is a mistranslation from "72 angels"

The thought that people blow themselves up with the idea that they will get laid is also negated by the fact that many suicide bombers and other people who believe they are fighting in jihad are married and have partners already.

But interesting points about increased aggression in polygynous societies

Nobody with any minor scholarship of islam actually believes the 72 virgins thing.

People who blow themselves up tend not to be religious scholars. They tend to be poorly educated and surrounded by people with poor educations. Christians standing outside abortion clinics believe the earth is 6000 years old and they come from environments with more civility and universal education. There's a lot of very bad interpretations of Islam in the middle east.

The thought that people blow themselves up with the idea that they will get laid

Whether the offer of virgins or glory is given is irrelevant, I did clearly say you can take your pick at the factors, you've chosen one and decided to claim it's my entire argument. The idea of being single is a major factor in young male suicide. It's not the only factor but it's one. Having a wife isn't just about sex, but sexually repressing young men in aggressive environments is a recipe for disaster.

i agree with you that the people involved are usually not well-educated in their religion so that point is well-taken. \

however, i still stand by my first point, which is that the idea of 'pleasing god' via martyrdom is rarely the primary motivation people have for their act of violence. they may use the idea of it being an admirable act as self-justification for the extreme act they're doing, but in the motivations that they give in their suicide letters and videos almost always focus exclusively on some perceived wrong that they are going to 'right' by their actions--almost always political or related to some sort of vengeance that they're trying to achieve. it's the same reason that any other angry person would commit an act of violence (economic or political instability, deaths of loved ones, etc.) but the self-justification for going to such an extreme length where they'd kill themself is that it is ok/admirable to do so by whatever religious justification they're sold.

"One of the world's poorest countries, Central African Republic has been wracked for decades by coups and rebellions. In March, a Muslim rebel alliance known as Seleka overthrew the Christian president of a decade. At that time, religious ideology played little role in the power grab. The rebels soon installed Djotodia as president, though he exerted little control over forces on the ground. He has since formally disbanded the Seleka coalition, but the former rebels now consider themselves the army.

Now, sectarian strife has grown. On Saturday, aid workers returned to the streets to collect bloated bodies that had lay uncollected in the heat since Thursday, when Christian fighters known as the anti-balaka, who oppose Djotodia, descended on the capital in a coordinated attack on several mostly Muslim neighbourhoods. "

the conflict was ignited when seleka fighters overthrew the government. At that time the religious ideology didn't play a role. it became sectarian when christian militants went and took it out on muslim neighbourhoods. so there you have it

That article seems to skip over the events that took place when the new government tried to disband the Seleka coalition. Many members of that coalition refused to disband and ended up committing atrocities against the Christians of the country. The Christian militias were formed after that.

while it is true that muslim groups did kill christians, in this particular conflict the first case of religiously motivated violence was by christians against muslims. The political leader supported by muslims overthrew the previous government in a coup, and christians retaliated by taking it out on a muslim village.

i think there should be a distinction made between an act of violence such as a coup (which was politically-motivated), and a village massacre for no reason other than the villagers' religion. Or else we would have to go back and forth endlessly for hundreds of years as one group's supported politician oppressed the other group. When you kill innocent people for nothing other than their identity, that is crossing a line that i'd like to think exists for most people

Again, I have no expertise in this, but I have read enough history to know that this sort of thing does not usually happen in a vacuum. Was the village home to members of the militia? What started the attack? And, was it really the religion, or the group identity that separates people? Also, leading up the coup, the rebels attacked other villages and killed civilians. And, of course, the coup did not happen in a vacuum. There have been earlier wars and conflicts that have not been forgotten.

Nope. Just pointing out the context. When one group comes into a town and kills people, survivors of the attack will try to seek justice/revenge. The cycle of violence is normal in human history. Breaking the cycle of violence is difficult and rare. You know, those who live by the sword will die by the sword.

And again, this attack, while horribly brutal, did not occur in a vacuum. It wasn't a random event. It's the result of years of back and forth attacks, and years of fear, and years of hatred.

War itself is not perfectly acceptable. Using that label to justify this is wrong because claiming a war has started with no warning from either faction is also wrong. People really need to calm down and when the neighborhood or country they are living in is no longer suitable for them, move the hell on. Avoid killing others and avoid getting you or your wife and kids killed. Gays in the American south need to move to places where pickup trucks aren't warming their engines to drag them to death, and muslim women who want out of the religion and lifestyle need to vanish to another part of the world where their brothers won't be shooting them at bus stops or burning them alive in the streets. If you can't get along with the people around you, get the hell away from them. the world is a big enough place.

Yes, that. Not easy, I know. I'm not blind to the divisions and actions that lead us to war, but it's just too easy to go to war these days. It wouldn't kill us to just TRY to keep some peace and avoid a war.

283 upvotes as of yet... if a group of Muslims had burnt Christians then the upvotes would be up in the thousands with thousands of comments saying "I told you so, the Moooooslims are at it again! Send them away! Islam is a religion of terror and violence!"

As always It's just a coincidence that everyone on one side belongs to religion A and everyone on the other side belongs to religion B. We must always remember that when people kill each-other over religion it has nothing to do with religion, because... oh I forget.

Oh come on! How are fundamentalist churches in AMERICA responsible for this? They have a limited influence inside their own country and if you ever go to any place in the world (except Uganda) it will be even less of an influence. Get your head out of your ass.

well here goes another reason to make fun of Africa. but seriously, i wish that Africa as a whole would just get their shit together and get back to being the economic center of the world like they once were.

It would be nice if we could divide the factions and give each a space where they could each safely nurse their wounds and grow whole. Give them each a timeout where they can gain some perspective and perhaps begin to accept their adversaries as humans entitled to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. Unfortunately separating them in this way is a war crime, so they will continue to give us stories of atrocities for a long time.

No, you watery tart, the thought process of that cannibal was not "well, in Mark 2:33 it says that I should cannibalize that guy I suspect of being a Muslim on the bus," it was pure primitive, irrational, asinine hatred channeled into violence. At most, religion, the Bible, the Qur'an, etc, plays a very tangential role in the mind of a fanatic.